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Fannish Friday: Best Endings
There's nothing better than a satisfying ending. Tell me about your favorites!
This will, presumably, be spoilerific, so enter the comments at your own risk. I'm keeping it vague in the post itself, but feel free to get into specifics in the comments if you wish.
My favorites?
+ Before Sunset. That two-line exchange at the end? Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
+ The Third Man. That long, long shot at the end? Love it.
+ Benjamin January #4, Sold Down the River. As I was getting towards the end, I was thinking, "This is so well written but I don't know if I can love it because it's so depressing." And then the ending happened. Eucatastrophe, as Tolkien would say. T
+ Queen of Attolia. Best final line? Best final line.
+ Code Name Verity. I have never in my life cried as much over a story as I cried over that damn book.
+ The Bad and the Beautiful. An entire film about why these people should not do a thing, and the last seconds show why they get pulled back in. SO GOOD.
+ It's a Wonderful Life. Is it sappy? Yes. Do I care? No, I am too busy sobbing. Every. Single. Time.
+ The Untamed. Way to completely undermine the censors without doing anything technically wrong. That smile. We know.
+ KBS's White Christmas. I will say nothing further but the last shot of this is SO GOOD.
This will, presumably, be spoilerific, so enter the comments at your own risk. I'm keeping it vague in the post itself, but feel free to get into specifics in the comments if you wish.
My favorites?
+ Before Sunset. That two-line exchange at the end? Gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.
+ The Third Man. That long, long shot at the end? Love it.
+ Benjamin January #4, Sold Down the River. As I was getting towards the end, I was thinking, "This is so well written but I don't know if I can love it because it's so depressing." And then the ending happened. Eucatastrophe, as Tolkien would say. T
+ Queen of Attolia. Best final line? Best final line.
+ Code Name Verity. I have never in my life cried as much over a story as I cried over that damn book.
+ The Bad and the Beautiful. An entire film about why these people should not do a thing, and the last seconds show why they get pulled back in. SO GOOD.
+ It's a Wonderful Life. Is it sappy? Yes. Do I care? No, I am too busy sobbing. Every. Single. Time.
+ The Untamed. Way to completely undermine the censors without doing anything technically wrong. That smile. We know.
+ KBS's White Christmas. I will say nothing further but the last shot of this is SO GOOD.
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Here are some other books with endings I particularly loved. Mostly not talking specific details so there aren't complete spoilers here, but there are definitely some.
The Duke Who Didn't, by Courtney Milan - I love how it avoids doing the traditional romance novel thing of including a final-act Thing That Breaks Apart The Couple before the happy ending! That trope can be a well-done part of a romance arc but it shouldn't have to be necessary for all such narratives, and I love the way this one subverts that expectation.
The Wolf and the Girl, by Aster Glenn Gray - the notes it ends on are just so perfect for the book it is, and that's all there is to say!
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night, by Iona Datt Sharma and Katherine Fabian - the character who is the Present Through His Absence quest object throughout most of the book appears in person at the end, and that can be a difficult thing for a book to handle because there is so much built up about the character that it can be hard to live up to, but when you finally meet him at the end, he's exactly right for everything you've heard about him while still being not quite what was expected, and it's so satisfying.
Verdigris Deep, by Frances Hardinge (also published as Well Witched) - this one is actually impossible to spoiler as far as I can tell. It's the kind of book that I personally find very stressful so I kept on flipping to the ending to try to reassure myself of how the latest aspect of the narrative would resolve so I could keep reading. So by the time I got to the ending, I'd already read the end 4 times. And yet it is written in such a way that I still didn't actually understand everything about the end until I reached it properly, so a major aspect of the ending was still a surprise! It's a truly impressive feat of writing. It's a very good ending too iirc.
Brother Cadfael's Penance, by Ellis Peters - it's the last book in a 20-book detective series, and it actually gives the detective-monk character a character arc of his own instead of overseeing other people's character arcs like the previous books, and it does SUCH a good job with it, I had so many feelings and it was the perfect ending after having spent so much time with him over the course of the series.
Frontier Wolf, by Rosemary Sutcliff - does such a cool thing with its main character's growth arc, where at the beginning of the book there's a big decision he has to make and he decides wrongly and it results in tragedy for a lot of people and derails his entirely life....and then at the end he's in a situation where he has to make exactly the same kind of decision again, and the right decision is to do exactly what he did last time, and he does it. I don't think I've ever seen that kind of thing done before with the ending of a book and I love it, it works SO well.
Island of Ghosts, by Gillian Bradshaw - it just does some really good things tonally; the main character has achieved the goals he had in this book, beyond anything that could have been hoped, but that doesn't mean that everything is actually GOOD. there's joy to be had, but there are sorrows still as well, and life goes on with both. I just really appreciated that as the right thing to do with the kind of book this was.
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Thank you for sharing! I loved reading your thoughts!
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My favorites, in order:
1) The end of The Bartimaeus Trilogy (specifically, Ptolemy's Gate) by Jonathon Stroud. This trilogy is immensely underrated in the U.S. overall, which I attribute to poor marketing and the fact that it was sold as MG (because one of the main characters is 12 in the first book) when it really truly is actually YA. I still remember sobbing my heart out when I finished the third book at 15 years old - one of my best friends was stopping by to drop something off and was alarmed by how red-eyed I was when I opened the door. I wish this series were more popular so that I had people to flail about the ending with.
2) The end of The Hunger Games trilogy, both the first ending and the epilogue (which I love, unpopular opinion as that is). I think both those final lines - "I tell him, 'Real'" and "But there are much worse games to play" are so fucking perfect and I'm in AWE of Suzanne Collins that she managed to pull off not one but two incredible ending lines.
3) "All was well." Harry Potter. This one is dated, of course. Sigh.
4) The ending of Gone Girl. So chilling and fantastic.
Hmm I've never come up with a list of favorite movie/TV show endings the way I have books, but off the top of my head, the BtVS and AtS endings are both brilliant; her smile and "let's go to work" are both so perfect for their own shows. As for a favorite series finale, that probably goes to Superstore (definitely for sitcoms at least). That finale was so beautiful and lovingly crafted, and it gave all the characters such a wonderful send-off. I was so sad to see it end, but the ending we got was absolutely perfect. When I'm sad and need a five-min pick-me-up, I turn to that ending.
Oh, and that makes me think of You've Got Mail for movies, because that last scene is another one I look for on YouTube as a pick-me-up. Another favorite movie ending - about as opposite from You've Got Mail as could be lol - is Ready or Not's.
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I love this story!
I think both those final lines - "I tell him, 'Real'" and "But there are much worse games to play" are so fucking perfect and I'm in AWE of Suzanne Collins that she managed to pull off not one but two incredible ending lines.
I agree with this!
her smile and "let's go to work" are both so perfect for their own shows.
Yup! I am not totally sold on everything that happens in the BtVS finale, but the "What are you going to do next?" + with her smile? WONDERFUL.
Ready or Not's is so good!
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I've been pondering this idly all weekend and here are some that I landed on, though I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch I previously thought about--
+ I know that it isn't really the ending of Jane Eyre, but the pre-epilogue image of Rochester leaning on Jane and them walking home together, mirroring when she helped him after Ye Olde Horse Crash when they first met, always really sticks in my heart.
+ I always feel a lil' sentimental pang at the end of Anne of Green Gables too.
+ Some novel endings that linger with me: Gone Girl, The Little Stranger, Fingersmith.
+ In terms of TV finales that I love both in general and in terms of their last moments: Gilmore Girls 7.22, Anne with an E, Succession, Grace and Frankie, (super throwback to) Six Feet Under.
+ I love the end of Austenland with the montage of everybody at the super cheesy Austenland theme park. So silly, so weird, so full of great visuals. Really ends this silly, weird, great movie on a high.
+ Bridget Jones's Diary's last scene and last dialogue exchange are just really forever wonderful.
+ The very end of the season one finale of Deadloch. I won't say any more than that. (I think I've left like this exact phrase in your comments here before. 😂 I just really like it, okay!)
+ I really like how Emma 2020 starts with her opening her eyes and ends with her closing her eyes; such pleasing symmetry!
+ I didn't even like that one movie with Idris Elba and Kate Winslet where they get stranded in the cold winter wilderness and have to survive together -- I remember finding it really disappointing because that premise and casting is amazing but in execution it was just meh -- but the very last moment is them running toward each other, and just before they embrace it cuts to black, and I've always found that so visually moving. That ending still sticks with me even though I can't remember anything else about the movie except disappointment! And as you can see, I'm not even bothering to look up the title, mwahaha. God. What is that movie even called? Hot People Stranded On A Snowy Mountain? Probably not.
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YES!
I love reading your answers!!! Thank you!!!
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+ In the same way, The Witch of Blackbird Pond has such a satisfying ending for all the main characters but especially Kit and Nat.
+ I also think The Borgias ended on as good a note as it could have for those involved :P
+ Pride and Prejudice!!! Perfect ending <333
+ Wanted (the Australian TV show), ending with the two main ladies on the run together in their camper van with candy, beloved forever!
Code Name Verity. I have never in my life cried as much over a story as I cried over that damn book.
We need a support group, for real.
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I usually only come up with movies, it seems, but here goes:
- the first Pirates of the Caribbean; happy endings all around and that final shot of Jack Sparrow with that score is perfection. Come to think of it, the reveal of Barbossa being alive at the end of part 2 was just as great!
- Knives Out. Martha staring at the asshole family from the balcony of the house she now owns - *chefs kiss*
- Inception. The spinning top. Hard cut to black. Cinema in an uproar.
- Iron Man. Perfect casting meets awesome ending with "I am Iron Man", kick-starting the biggest franchise in the world.
- Barbenheimer. Both movies have a great ending, one leaving us with a super funny line, the other giving us a lot of food for thought.
- Life of Brian. Always look on the bright side of life.
- The Truman Show. One last bow.
A book ending: Life of Pi. I was on the edge of my seat throughtout the second part of this book, and the coda in the end is a true gut punch but also explains so well what people get out of religion.
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